Kamal Nath blasts planners as Montek Singh looks on

Union road transport minister Kamal Nath on Monday took the Planning Commission head on, giving it sobriquets like “armchair advisor” and “buffet table” even as Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the panel looked on.

The plan panel has been critical of the road ministry’s 20 km a day target, to which Nath had earlier told the media that the panel should limit its role to planning rather than interfering in execution matters.

But, this is the first time Nath has lashed out at the panel in a public forum. And did he lash out!

“Producing a book is one thing and producing a road is another,” he said. “You (Planning Commission) collect something from here, something from there and produce a book. It is all very well when you are an armchair advisor. Book (report) should not only be well-bound, but it should have content also.”

“The Planning Commission has a vast reservoir of knowledge. It is like a buffet table. But when you go to a buffet table, you pick what you can chew and you chew what you can digest,” he continued.

More jibes were to come. Nath said a top official of GMR Group, which built the new airport in New Delhi, attributed speedy construction of the new airport terminal to non-involvement of the Planning Commission in the project.

Ahluwalia meanwhile kept mum, refusing to be drawn into the debate and instead, tried to accommodate the minister’s stand. It was “constructive criticism,” he said, and even conceded, “Frankly, we only have a fraction of roads than what the country needs to grow at 9%.”

Ahluwalia admitted there were problems within the Commission and said, “We are sorting them out.”

The Planning Commission had expressed reservations on the ministry’s target to construct 20 km national highways per day. Apart from terming the ministry’s target unrealistic, the Commission in March opposed the ministry’s proposal to add 10,000 km of state highways to the 70,000 km-long national highways network. With all this brewing, Nath termed the
Planning Commission as an “armchair advisor”, oblivious to the ground realities.

But the face-off does call for a number crunching. During the UPA-I, the same ministry under DMK leader T R Baalu barely managed to register an average road construction rate per day at 3-4 km a day. The ministry was sitting on a pile of 60 projects worth Rs 70,000 crore without any takers and only 600 km could be awarded in 2008-09. Planning Commission’s ‘model’ documents only added to the confusion, forcing the infrastructure companies to the court of law, thereby leading to cost escalation due to litigation.